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Two unrelated comments on Martin's latest.<br>
<br>
First, I think that one can indeed argue that sex is less important
for cousins than for siblings. One of several possible reasons:
Given a culture with nuclear families, limited bathroom facilities,
and modesty constraints governing cross-sex bathing, whether my
siblings were brothers or sisters would affect my daily life much
more than whether my cousins, who I only met once a month, were male
or female.<br>
<br>
Secondly, some very rough and ready frequency counts from two
languages of Indonesia that distinguish gender for older siblings
but not younger ones:<br>
<br>
Minangkabau<br>
591 - younger sibling<br>
998 - older sister<br>
1197 - older brother<br>
<br>
Jakarta Indonesian<br>
3050 - younger sibling<br>
749 - older sister<br>
710 - older brother<br>
<br>
Minangkabau conforms to what I take to be Martin's generalization:
older siblings are more important than younger ones, and this is
reflected both in (a) a gender distinction, and (b) greater
frequency, a roughly 4:1 ratio. However, Jakarta Indonesian
exhibits a conflicting pattern, in which younger siblings are
referred to roughly twice as frequently as both male and female
older siblings together. These differences could be due to
differences between the languages, or differences between the
corpora, or both. Lots more work needed here ...<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 21/07/2017 10:39, Martin Haspelmath
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:5971BDCA.8040806@shh.mpg.de" type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
It is indeed an interesting suggestion (by Bingfu Lu) that sex
neutralization in kinship terms is related to the importance of
sex for observers. This factor may also explain that we often have
sex-differentiated terms for domestic animals, but rarely for wild
animals.<br>
<br>
But the "importance" of sex differentiation is not easy to assess.
As Greenberg notes, there is a tendency to neutralize sex also in
more remote relationships (e.g. with cousins, where even English
neutralizes, and with in-laws), and it is hard to argue, for
example, that sex is less important in cousins than in siblings.
So maybe frequency of use is a better explanation after all? Does
anyone have frequency counts for 'younger sibling' and 'older
sibling' terms? (And frequency counts for domestic as opposed to
wild animals?)<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I also have a comment on Maïa
Ponsonnet's crictical remark concerning the term "universal":<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:592673830.1620490.1500592591535@mail.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<div style="font-family:courier new, courier, monaco, monospace,
sans-serif;font-size:medium;">
<div>
<div>
<!--StartFragment-->
<div><small>However, I wonder is calling such hypotheses
"universals" too early can create other problems. We
may then omit to disqualify the hypothesis, even after
many, many counter-examples have been provided. So we
may end up postulating universality based on say, 10
cases, and 10 years later still be busy providing
counter-examples for what we still call a "(potential)
universal" while say, 20 counter-examples, have
already been provided.</small></div>
<small> </small>
<div><small><br>
</small></div>
<small> </small>
<div><small>So perhaps calling it "hypothetical
implication" may be safer?</small></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
The danger certainly exists that some claims become very famous
and are repeated and believed even though there is no good
evidence for them (e.g. that spinach contains a lot of iron).<br>
<br>
But I feel that it is clear that every claim in science has the
status of a hypothesis that is subject to potential
disconfirmation. The differences reside in the amount of
supporting evidence. The <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/">Konstanz Universals
Archive</a> is a great resource both for references to claims of
universals and for the basis of the claims (thus, without reading
Greenberg (1966), one can see that universal No 1656 is based on
120 languages).<br>
<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
On 21.07.17 01:16, bingfu Lu wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:592673830.1620490.1500592591535@mail.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<div style="font-family:courier new, courier, monaco, monospace,
sans-serif;font-size:medium;">
<div>
<div>
<p
style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:21.25pt;mso-char-indent-count:1.77;line-height:16.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">I agree with Martin’s bold claim. It
seems to be very natural in the following senses.</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:21.25pt;mso-char-indent-count:1.77;line-height:16.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">First, from the formal perspective,
babies are very likely to be neutralized in sex. If
there is a continuum of sex neutralization from the
point of being very young (babies) to the point of
very old, then, the younger section, which includes
the babies, should be more likely to be neutralized.</span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:21.25pt;mso-char-indent-count:1.77;line-height:16.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">Second, from the perspective of
linguistic iconicity, babies tend to be
sex-neutralized because their sex features are least
developing. And it is natural, the less
sex-developing, the easier to be sex-neutralized. </span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:21.25pt;mso-char-indent-count:1.77;line-height:16.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">According to the degrees of development
in sex features, it might to be predicted that there
may be some languages where the very old elders are
neutralized in linguistic form, since very old elders
are sex-retrodegraded. </span></p>
<p
style="margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:21.25pt;mso-char-indent-count:1.77;line-height:16.0pt;layout-grid-mode:char"><span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"
lang="EN-US">In short, the sex neutralization is more
likely when the sex features are less strong and less
important in age. </span></p>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<hr>
<div id="ydp2f44aed4yahoo_quoted_0908802504"
class="ydp2f44aed4yahoo_quoted">
<div style="font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif;font-size:13px;color:#26282a;">
<div>On Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 5:10:32 PM GMT+8, Martin
Haspelmath <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de"><haspelmath@shh.mpg.de></a>
wrote:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div id="ydp2f44aed4yiv4734335248">
<div> On the basis of Turkish (<i>kardeş</i>) and
Minangkabau (<i>adiak</i>), which neutralize the sex
distinction in the younger sibling term, one could
propose the following universal:<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
"If a language makes a distinction between elder and
younger siblings and neutralizes sex only in one
type, then it neutralizes in younger siblings."<br
clear="none">
<br clear="none">
This may seem bold, but I think that such bold
formulations are productive in that they are likely
to elicit responses from language specialists whose
language goes against the generalization. (And if
the bold generalization makes it into print
somewhere, then one can even write an abstract on
the basis of one's data and argue against a previous
claim.)<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Now it so happens that a claim very similar to the
one above has already been made, on p. 76-77 in
Greenberg's chapter "Universals of kinship
terminology", which is Chapter five of his most
important work:<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
</div>
<div>
<div class="ydp2f44aed4yiv4734335248csl-bib-body"
style="line-height:1.35;padding-left:2em;">
<div class="ydp2f44aed4yiv4734335248csl-entry">Greenberg,
Joseph H. 1966. <i>Language universals, with
special reference to feature hierarchies</i>.
The Hague: Mouton.<br clear="none">
</div>
<span class="ydp2f44aed4yiv4734335248Z3988"
title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Language%20universals%2C%20with%20special%20reference%20to%20feature%20hierarchies&rft.place=The%20Hague&rft.publisher=Mouton&rft.aufirst=Joseph%20H.&rft.aulast=Greenberg&rft.au=Joseph%20H.%20Greenberg&rft.date=1966"></span></div>
<br clear="none">
Greenberg formulates the generalization in terms of
one kind of kinship being "marked", the other
"unmarked". "Marked" features tend to be
neutralized, so saying that younger siblings are
"marked" amounts to the same as the above claim. (In
my view of things, this would mean that some kinds
of kinship features are more frequently used than
others.)<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
(Greenberg also says somewhere that masculine/male
is unmarked, so he probably predicts that female
terms ternd to be neuralized for age, thus answering
Siva Kalyan's question.)<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
So there are a lot of interesting predictions that
could be tested if someone finally made a
comprehensive world-wide database on kinship terms
(I think some people near Hedvig are working on
this).<br clear="none">
<br clear="none">
Martin<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig
</pre>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
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